His review of it was devastating. I saw on Twitter he was accused of sexism, and when asked to provide evidence the Shirley Temple line was used. That feels light for such an accusation, especially when the writing of the memoir--at least what Logan quoted--was almost obscenely precious.

Logan was asked by Tourniquet to review the book. I expect that the editors had vetted it and guessed how he'd react. Overblown publishing products like this are easy targets, mainly because they are produced by the overblown for the masses. I edited a dozen anthologies of poetry and criticism and used Contemporary Authors, Wikipedia, and other online sources for what is known as "common knowledge." But if I directly quoted anything, it was simple enough to preface it with "As Harold Bloom has said." I gave a rather negative review of Rita Dove's recent anthology of American poetry, mainly basing my comments on some basic errors and on curious omissions of some authors and disproportionate samples of others. The Bialosky book appears to be a rather strange combination of personal memoir and anthology; perhaps there have been others like it. Anyway, I won't be buying it. Putting together an anthology of contemporary work is almost impossible these days because of permissions fees, even for long-dead authors whose work is still not in the public domain. I could list examples, but I'm out of the anthology business now and leave it to someone with deep pockets.

Before I blew back to math, I taught college literature for a while. A point made in my classrooms was that everybody learns mostly by imitation, and that the knuckle test of research was whether someone has really processed what was read or seen by putting the ideas into actual new words that indicated at least minimal thought about their contents. That done, maybe even a new idea might form that could credit the student. Pencilling a mustache onto a Wikipedia Mona Lisa wouldn't do. Of course, rewriting will always be too time-consuming for some students. As for JB, who's to say? The few times I have heard her in person definitely stick in the mind.